Brace Yourself
by thisbliss
Summary: When I was fifteen, my best friend fell in love with an enemy, my brother had his heart broken and my other brother posed nude in Witch Weekly. You'd think that having the name Potter would make you used to all this.


**Chapter One**

"I can't believe you got it framed," I said to my eldest brother

"Why shouldn't I, Lily?" James raised his shaggy eyebrows, "It's a great shot of me."

"But -," I spluttered back, "It's practically pornographic!"

"Actually, I prefer the term art."

I thought back to the first time I had seen that moving photograph. It had been around six months ago at the Hogwarts breakfast table and I had been happily enjoying my cornflakes and honey, when pig nosed Sheila Smith had dumped a copy of Witch Weekly right on top of my favourite Quidditch Magazine.

"Guess who's on page twelve?" She was smirking from ear to ear

"I don't know, Dumbledore?" I usually would have had a better comeback but I was completely knackered from staying up all of the night before working on my Transfiguration essay. Obviously my unenthusiastic attitude did not please the Sheila, for next thing I knew she had grabbed the magazine, opened to a page and shoved it in my face.

I let out a loud gasp. Staring back at me was the grinning face of my big brother, James Sirius Potter. His hair was windswept, his teeth were gleaming white and he was clad in a pair of black robes. Seemingly normal, yes? WRONG! For you see, my idiot of a brother was wearing_ only_ those robes, nothing else, which meant that all his – bits – were out on show for the whole world to see.

In true Weasley fashion, my face went bright red in embarrassment and I slammed the magazine closed and pushed it into Sheila's chest.

"Merlin!" I shrieked, "I can't believe you read stuff like this Sheila! What a perv!" and although the people around me were laughing at my joke, I quickly left the table and sprinted to the owlery, already planning the letters of anger I was going to send to my brother.

I remembered the chaos that had followed. The Christmas holidays had started the next day allowing my parents to deal with their twenty year old son, face to face. As I had been locked in my room "studying" the low tones of my father saying such words as "disappointed" and "what were you thinking?" had managed to float their way up the stairs and through my keyhole. On Christmas Eve, James had finally had enough. My parents, my other brother, and I had come back from a fun dinner at the Scamander's to find a note taped to the front door and his bedroom empty. Since then, my parents had had no contact with him.

"So Lily," James voice brought me rushing back to the present, "I never actually got your opinion on said art."

I groaned. Wow, my brother could be up himself sometimes. "I dunno… you look like a Greek God?"

"Interesting… I was actually aiming for Roman, but I don't think you can tell the difference."

He led me away from the beautiful "art" adorning the wall next to the front door of his Diagon Alley apartment and towards the open plan living, kitchen and dining space. After fumbling around in the pantry for a bit, he tossed me a bottle of foaming butterbeer. I, having just spread myself out across the scarlet couch, caught the bottle with ease, uncorked it and took a swig. James sat himself down in a large, matching armchair and took a long drink of his own bottle of firewhisky.

"Not to sound like mum," I said, "but isn't it a little early to be drinking?"

"I've been up since four you know, so it stopped being early around the time I hit the showers about five hours later," he stared a the ceiling and sighed, "Ahh… the woes of being a chaser for a national Quidditch team."

I took a gulp of butterbeer as if to say 'no comment,' I wasn't in the mood to talk about James' recent rise to the top of Quidditch fame.

"Hows Al?" by Al, he meant Albus Potter, our brother, his younger, mine older. Al was first person with Potter/Weasley blood in known memory to be sorted into Slytherin and more commonly known as "the Black Sheep" when he wasn't around.

"More cynical and brooding than usual," I said casually, "he just broke up with Amy,"

James sat bolt upright in his chair, his blue eyes opening wide. "What? When did this happen?"

"Last week actually, he go – "

"No, that's not what I meant. When did he even get a girlfriend?"

"Oh of course…. You'd left before it even happened." I smiled, "Remember how at Christmas Albus was acting really weird? You know, happier than usual."

"Yes…."

"Well it turns out that before term finished, he had made out with Amy Finnigan and they were sending these cutesy, love letters back and forth all holidays. Yeah, I know, so not Al, but I'm telling the truth, I saw them with my own eyes. So they were what you might call, "an item" for the rest of the year until, two weeks ago, Albus got this letter from her saying that she had, 'met someone new' and needed to 'move on,' he's been a walking around with a cloud above his head since."

"Wow… I can't believe Al actually managed to get himself a girlfriend. It really blows your mind doesn't it?" James chuckled and tipped his bottle back. We sat there in silence for a bit until –

"Lily,"

"Yes,"

"Why are you here?" his tone was serious and very un-James like.

"I told you. I came up to say hello," wow, I was a bad liar. I suddenly became very interested in the paper label wrapped around my butterbeer bottle.

"Did they send you?" he was staring right at me now, "I don't believe that you would come to Diagon Alley just to see me,"

"Well, if you must know," I looked up from the bottle to stare right back at him, "We, and by we I mean, Albus, Mum, Dad and I were in Diagon Alley today to buy school supplies for next year. But yes, Mum and Dad did pull me aside and asked me to come up here and try and talk you into –"

"NO!" He was out of his chair now,

"It's just dinner!" I pleaded, "At the Leaky Cauldron with the rest of the Weasley's and the Longbottoms. Come on James, it's been over six months, even I'm starting to think it's been a bit too long." Now I was standing too.

"Well everyone has different opinions Lily Luna Potter," he snapped at me, "maybe I think it hasn't been long enough. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to owl my manager about something, maybe it would be a good time for you to leave." His blue eyes were fixed on the door.

As I left the apartment I stopped in the doorway. "Please, just think about it." I tried to give him a piercing stare like the one Grandma Weasley is famous for, the one that can make anyone confess. Then I turned on my heel and shut the door behind me, hoping that my trick had worked.

A/N: Hope you liked my first chapter, there will be more to come.


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